Oracle’s $9 billion fight with Google continues, looks like software giant’s mantra is ‘not to give up’
Oracle for the last six years has been involved in a legal battle with Google over intellectual property theft of the Java programming language by the search giant. It has been asking the court system to fine Google over $9 billion in damages for the theft. However, a federal jury in May considered Google had properly used the Java code under the “fair use” provision in U.S. copyright law and closed the case.
However, it looks like the software company is not ready to hang its boots yet. On July 6, Oracle filed a motion in San Francisco U.S. District Court again asking the same judge that threw the decision out back in May, to chuck the verdict. The company referred to the case law suggesting use is not legal if the user “exclusively acquires conspicuous financial rewards” from its use of the copyrighted material. Google, said Oracle, has earned more than $42 billion from Android. Therefore, Oracle is insisting that this isn’t actually fair use and is instead infringement.
Oracle wants the judge to stick to the narrower and more traditional applications of fair use, “for example, when it is ‘criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching … scholarship, or research.'”
On the other hand, Google has constantly argued that the Java code was free and open to all and that its use of the code was transformative.
During the recent case, Google argued that Sun Microsystems, which created Java in the 1990s long before it was bought by Oracle, had no issues with Google using the code without a license.
“We didn’t pay for the free and open things,” Larry Page, CEO of Google’s parent company Alphabet, testified during the trial.
Looking at the way things are shaping in this copyright infringement case, it appears like Oracle will probably be trying to pursue this case for at least another six years.
Source: Silicon Valley
